Two years on from the highly-controversial EU-Turkey deal, many thousands of refugees are still trapped on Greek islands. One of them offers an open invitation to EU leaders to see their inhospitable conditions at the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos.

The European Parliament will investigate how Cambridge Analytica, a US company, obtained the data of about 50 million users of Facebook. The case, which was revealed by the Guardian newspaper over the weekend, is "an unacceptable violation of our citizens' privacy rights," the parliament's president Antonio Tajani said on Monday, adding that his institution will "call digital platforms to account."

The EU and the UK made a 'decisive step' towards an agreement on the UK's exit, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and Brexit minister Davis Davis said on Monday. They agreed in particular on maintaining citizens' rights during the transition period after Brexit that would end in December 2020. Several issues still need to be discussed, especially the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The controversy over the new EU Commission top civil servant is revealing of what is wrong with EU institutions and how they are blocked by national governments, says award-winning Austrian novelist Robert Menasse.

The European Commission's plan to propose a new 'delivery model' for the common agriculture policy (CAP) needs to be made more specific, according to Joao Figueiredo, a member of the Court of Auditors. "It's not clear enough what is the delivery model," Figueiredo told journalists on Monday. The same day, agriculture ministers were meeting in Brussels to discuss the new model, which would give member states more flexibility of implementation.

Europe's car industry is "increasingly nervous" about Brexit, secretary-general Erik Jonnaert of the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (Acea) said on Monday. He presented an Acea position paper, which called for continued mutual recognition of regulatory certificates called 'type approvals', as well as a longer transitional period. But he noted that "everybody will be losing". "We need to prepare for the worst-case scenario," added Acea trade director Jonathan O'Riordan.

EU foreign ministers said Monday they were "shocked" by the use of nerve gas against a former Russian spy in Salisbury earlier this month. They called on Russia to "address urgently the questions raised by the UK and the international community and to provide immediate, full and complete disclosure of its [gas] Novichok programme." They expressed their "unqualified solidarity" with the UK.

Heiko Maes, the German foreign minister has described Russia as a "difficult partner", but said the UK poisoning was a "bilateral" issue, indicating that Britain can count on little support from the EU.

In a follow-up to last week's declaration that "Islam does not belong to Germany", Germany's new interior minister drew fire from across the political spectrum again on Sunday when criticising the European Commission for a counterproductive "moralising" tone towards eastern European states refusing to take in asylum seekers under an EU-wide quota system. Seehofer, a former Bavarian premier, earlier criticised Merkel for her handling of the 2015 migration crisis.

Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica from its platform on Friday after 28-year-old whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, revealed to the Observer and New York Times how the company harvested personal information of 50 million Facebook users to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements. Cambridge Analytica also helped the winning Brexit campaign. Facebook knew data had been collected as early as 2015.

Speaking after Friday's meeting in Paris French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to table a roadmap for eurozone reforms in June. Macron has made eurozone overhaul a central goal since taking power last May, while Merkel is reluctant, held back by her CSU governing partner. Merkel pledged however to work closely with France on a dialogue with citizens.

Together with many other partners, including the United States, Canada and Norway, the European Union has implemented a policy of non-recognition and sanctions regimes, targeting people and entities that have promoted Russia's illegal annexation.

Google has paid tens of millions of euros to develop an influential network of friendly European academics, a report from Campaign for Accountability (CfA) said on Friday. "Google's academic influence programme in Europe has gone beyond funding existing academic institutions, as it does in the US," it said. "Europe is both a key market for Google, and the most organised and effective source of opposition to Google's expansion plans".